Thursday, January 10, 2008

Take it back!

Okay Judges, we had an understanding.

We were in so much agreement! It was unprecedented! I was surprised every week to hear you talking so much sense, to hear you saying things I actually agreed with. When you ousted Elisa, I was upset but I understood. The same with Chris. I actually was completely behind you the rest of the time.

Until tonight. Oh no, when you break my heart you really make sure to do it well, don't you? Why do you do this to me Nina? Heidi, how have you forsaken me so?

In other words: who put what in their water before the episode and don't you ever do it again. What in the WORLD were those results? Were we on the same planet? Did you people EVER go to prom? No really, even the designers: I don't believe you know what prom is.

Do me a favor everybody, do a quick google image search for "Prom" or "Prom Dresses."

In my little corner of the world (which in HS was Southwest Virginia, nestled between Radford University and Virginia Tech) prom dresses were about the same amount of decadence and expense as bridesmaid dresses, only often with more style.

Actually, my prom dress Junior year WAS a bridesmaids dress. Shh, don't tell anybody. But the fact is that these teenagers really do deck themselves out like the red carpet. Almost none of these dresses was actually nice enough for prom in my hometown. So I find it hard to believe that these rich, private school girls did not want something similarly fine. In fact, when I went to my first formal "grown-up" party (a holiday party for my husband's company) I realized that the dresses were pretty much just prom dresses. Man, where is Kayne when you need him?

This episode was so insane, that as much as I'm angry at the judges, it's bringing back the feelings of old seasons. For once, I finally am actually involved. I care! I was talking to the tv again!



I'm unpopular in this opinion, I realize this, but I think Christian needed to be booted for his own good this week. If I heard one more disdainful comment I was going to throw a complete fit.

So Christian is above his fellow designers, he's too good for Hershey's, and he's OBVIOUSLY too cool for school (and prom). Fine, Christian, we get it. How many times do you have to have something like this happen before you get your comeuppance and start behaving like a real person? There's no easy way to put this: stop being a diva. Even Santino eventually realized he wasn't all that and baboon's ass.

As for the dress, well...I hate it. It looks like it could have been something interesting, but the construction looks so poor that quite frankly it reminds me of my own attempts at more formal dresses. It is absolutely not a prom dress, that's for sure. It looks terrible on her figure, though the colors compliment her skintone. But the silhouette is just not something that she should be in, and she was the client.

His behavior on the runway was just downright ridiculous. I do agree with Nina, him blaming his client was wrong. It's just professionally unappealing, along with the fact that the challenge WAS to work with your client.

I do, however, concede that his client was annoying. She was overbearing, sure. But in my world, that's just the way fate likes to turn around and give people what they gave out before.



Chris belonged in the top three for this dress. He absolutely deserved as much praise as could have been heaped on him. I could easily see all the richest girls in my school begging their parents to buy them this dress. If it came in a deep navy blue (or any shade of blue, really), I would buy it myself. I'm not kidding, depending on the price, I'd go out and put some money down for it because I think it would look good on most body types, and I need a new formal dress.

This dress is the exact mix of style and fun that most prom dresses are designed for. In my world, the only reason I don't think it should have won is that I don't adore the color. It looks great on this girl, but for some reason I'm not a fan.

But man Chris, thank you. You're actually bucking up and showing us what you've got. Keep it up!

(Also, thank you for shutting down Sweet P and Victorya's whine fest by pointing out you got voted off. They were annoying me).



You know, if you just ignored the bust of this dress, it's actually quite lovely.

But I was positive Jillian would be called out for how borked up the bust looked. It's bunching oddly, the seams aren't smooth...I just don't understand it at all. It's a great idea, actually. If it was constructed perfectly, I bet I would like it.

Maybe I'm crazy and it's not a construction problem. But the bust of this dress looks terrible and I don't understand why not even Tim said anything about it. Where is the justice?

I do, however, love the colors.



I was absolutely baffled by almost every word coming out of the judge's mouthes during the judging of this dress. What planet were they from? Matronly? Old? Wait, what?

In Tim's Take, he says they really were obsessed with the hem. Okay, I decided to go and check out my own skirts because I personally am a huge fan of the flirty handkerchief hem style, which this seemed to want to be. I have four of these style skirts.

Each of them had the edge of the fabric barely turned under, not even a half inch, and a simple seam around. One of them (a red one, actually) had the very edge of the fabric covered with a sort of zig-zag stick that gave the bottom this interesting rolled look.

Neither of these seem like what Kevin did, so okay. He should have done one of those two things, fine. I actually can't understand why he didn't just do a quick, small hem. I know that hems are annoying. Trust me, my last sewing project I actually volunteered to do anything else so that my friend would sew the hems because it was probably about ten yards of hem to sew. But while it was tedious, it was actually the easiest part of the entire project. If you actually own a hem gauge, then yes it would be time consuming but not the end of the world.

The only reason I don't like this dress is that it's not formal enough for prom. If it was floor length, then yes, I'd be all for it. But as it is, it's a homecoming style dress, where shorter dresses are more the style.

I honestly have no idea what they mean when they said this dress looked old. I see nothing about this that looks old. The only thing I can figure is that they didn't like it and latched onto the first criticism they could think of, if it fit or not.



I actually really love this dress. It's very cute, it seems like a great marriage of Kit and her client's styles. The colors are really bright and fun.

My only problem with it is again, it isn't formal enough for prom. It would work, especially depending on the girl wearing it. But I think people just really have missed what the modern prom is: a FORMAL.

But I do really like this dress, it is fun and well made. It deserved a little bit of praise, but then I often think that of Kit's outfits. Why isn't she getting the attention she deserves?



In the middle of the episode Wednesday I realized finally why I don't like Rami. He actually reminds me of somebody I used to work with, years ago. This somebody was...not a nice person to work with. And Rami has a lot of the same mannerisms and a very similar look.

So forgive me for not jumping on the Rami bandwagon, it's nothing to do with him, I just can't get past that resemblance to somebody I'd rather never see again. It's not his fault!

This dress though, sorry, is his fault. What IS it? It looks like there is supposed to be a train, but the model got tired of tripping on it and threw it over her shoulder. Also, please, how many times do I have to say this: prom is a FORMAL, not a cocktail party. FORMAL. This is not a formal dress. Just because they are 17 doesn't mean they don't understand the meaning of formal. Please to go pick up an issue of YM's Prom Special. Or whatever the hip teenager magazine is these days.

This dress doesn't really just fail because it's not right for prom, but because it can't decide what it is. It looks like three different dresses put together, without too much trouble to blend the ideas.



I don't understand all the hate for this dress. For one thing, if you're going to hate on the skirt you have to hate on the winning dress too (and trust me, I will). The weird bubble hem was just...dumb. I can't even figure out why somebody would think it looked cool.

If people were complaining about the fact that the skirt was odd, or that it wasn't formal (again, not formal, what challenge were you people doing? What proms did you go to?) then I would understand. But instead everybody is angry about the color.

I don't think the color is that bad. She needed more interesting makeup to mitigate the fact that it's not a color that pops. But I don't think the color is so bad, I think under the prom lights (it's a dance, the lights are dim) this lighter, sparkling fabric would actually pop instead of fading out like darker shades.

All that said, I would gladly have let them eliminate Ricky if it meant Kevin got to stay. Ricky did well at the Hershey challenge, but in this one he's right back to lackluster. It's boring (not because of the color, because it's a non-entity of a design) and it doesn't fit the challenge at all. And honestly, it doesn't look that far removed from lingerie. Plus, the construction isn't too on par.



This dress should have won. Flat out, no question in my mind. The judges are on massive amounts of hallucinogens if they do not agree that this dress should have won. They obviously are too old to properly judge high school fashion.

This dress is classic, beautiful, perfectly constructed, and made of some of the most gorgeous fabric I've seen this season. The working relationship between Sweet P and her client was perfect. The client asked for something, Sweet P took her wishes and made them work without compromising herself.

The styling is perfect. The hair, the jewelery. Everything is absolutely spot-on exactly what it should be. This dress and this model could be the cover of Seventeen's Prom Special.

I can find nothing to say that is negative about this dress. Some people might say it looks a little too "old" or something. But as I said before, I see no difference between the formal wear at my prom, and the formal wear at parties for adults. There are outfits on red carpets right now that aren't that far from dresses being sold for high school girls. There isn't this huge disconnect like the people on the show seemed to think.

The fact that this dress didn't win is ridiculous. Sweet P had been faltering, but she pulled this one out. She deserves a lot of praise for this. I only wish I would look good in it.



There is one thing I like about this dress: the color. It's a fun, bright blue. Something like that can really be a neat twist on the average formal dress.

I hate everything else. The depths to which I dislike this dress are matched only by the depths to which I dislike the judges for choosing it to win. What in the WORLD are they thinking? How could any of them have thought that THIS was the best example of prom fashion on that runway? When you had Sweet P and Chris' dresses next to it?

It wasn't. It just simply wasn't. For one: NOT FORMAL. This is maybe a homecoming level of formal, it is NOT PROM FORMAL.

Two, bubble skirt. I hate that style of hem. It flows funny, and it makes the model look like a cartoon character or something. The movement is completely off, and it just reminds me of a marshmallow or something.

Three, the bedazzled front. I could have sworn that the Bedazzler was "out" when I was in high school, is it making a comeback? Cheap jewels that don't match glued on in no discernible pattern? WHAT? Without the jewels it was okay, with them it looks like somebody in high school that fancies herself a designer made her prom dress and expects everybody to think it is "kind of a big deal."

Four, the bust. It's just constructed badly! It fits strange, it looks lopsided...it's just not made well. Sweet P's dress had no flaws, not one. This one looks again, like a home sewn job.

I cannot fathom why this dress won. I can't wrap my mind around it in the slighest. I can't come up with a single reason for that decision, except that the judges have some sort of strange love for Victorya, who I personally think should have been eliminated a few episodes ago. Her construction seems poor, her fit is almost always bad, and I haven't seen her do much that really pops and demands attention. Why do the judges like her so much? How completely disconnected are the judges from the actual purpose of the challenge that they thought this met the criteria?

It seems to me if you're going to do a prom episode, you should maybe research prom. The designers couldn't, obviously, but they had their clients to help them do it right. The judges should have known what they were talking about before they walked in that room, and they so clearly didn't.

One last note, and I hate to be harsh to 17 year olds (which is a lie, really, but I usually save my barbs for private conversations) but couldn't they have gotten some runway coaches for the girls? This was our fifth episode with non-models on the runway (mothers/sisters, designers themselves x2, "real women", and now high schoolers). This was by far the worst showing when it came to runway walking and presence.

When I still worked at the newspaper, I covered a high school fashion show. Those kids were fantastic, they weren't awkward in the slightest. So I know high school kids can do a runway walk, it's completely possible. So why were so many of these girls so awkward? They didn't show off the garments at their best, and that's kind of a shame.

Though I guess, walking a runway in front of Heidi Klum would make anybody seem awkward and nervous. But really, I think the show would benefit from a runway coach for these episodes. I was too focused on the model's walks that I missed the clothes the first time around.